Forests for the future: Kenya's carbon credit scheme

Aug 10, 2014 by Reuben Kyama

Elephants forage in Tsavo East National park in southern Kenya, on March 20, 2012

When 61-year old Mercy Joshua was young, the vast forests of southeastern Kenya teemed with wildlife, but decades of unchecked deforestation by locals have devastated the land.

She watched forests dwindle and rivers dry up across her homeland of Kasigau—a semi-arid savanna grassland dotted with shrubs, woodland and small rugged hills—as people cut down the trees to scratch a living by selling them for firewood.

But now, after decades of degradation, a local project has found a way to preserve the forests and support the community by getting international companies to pay to plant trees.

"We were losing everything, but thanks to the project we have learnt even how to live with the wild animals," Joshua, a mother of four, told AFP.

"These days, we don't cut down trees... they are our friends," she added.

The project has breathed new life into Kasigau, a 500,000 acre (200,000 hectare) dryland forest 330 kilometres (205 miles) southeast of the capital Nairobi that connects the two halves of Kenya's renowned Tsavo national park.

Founded in 2009, it is part of a UN-backed carbon credit scheme aimed at stopping 54 million tonnes of carbon dioxide being released into the atmosphere over the next 30 years, equivalent to 1.2 million tonnes a year.

Leading buyers of the credits include Microsoft, Barclays Bank and Kenya Airways, which have invested $3.5 million (2.5 million euros) each since the project started.

These companies buy carbon credits by paying to conserve existing trees and plant new ones. The forests soak in carbon from the atmosphere, helping to reduce carbon dioxide levels in the air and so offset what the companies release themselves.

'No jobs, no water'

The Kasigau scheme has also created a new source of income for impoverished local communities where most people scrape a living by hunting animals for meat or illegal charcoal production.

"There are no jobs here, no water, and I have a family to feed," said Matthew Mutie, a 40-year-old father of three who supports his family by making charcoal for around $3 a sack.

A farmer is seen making charcoal from twigs pruned from local forest during a controlled charcoal-making excercise at Maungu, a village some 300km southeast of Kenyan capital Nairobi, on February 11, 2011

"Most of the people in this area are subsistence farmers and in most cases their crops fail due to poor rainfall," added Rob Dodson from Wildlife Works, which oversees the Kasigau project.

The scheme directly employs 400 people but also supports nearly 100,000 rural Kenyans in other projects, including sustainable charcoal production, tree nurseries, and eco-friendly craft products.

In a deeply poor region where many people live on $1 per day, the project has made a major impact, bringing in an average of $270 per person a year—about a quarter of Kenya's GDP per capita.

"The project is a perfect example of how African countries can help in the fight against climate change, while at the same time benefitting the local communities," said Josep Gari, from the United Nations Development Programme.

Kenyan officials said the Kasigau project was helping to transform people's lives.

"Once an area is under a carbon credit scheme, the area becomes protected," said Elijah Mwandoe, a senior local government environment official.

"We tell communities if you have a tree standing, it is making our air clean, and if we have clean air then we will all benefit and we will get rainfall."

'Help society adapt'

Deforestation accounts for roughly 15 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions every year, pumping more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than the global transportation sector, according to Wildlife Works.

Global warming is already hitting southern Kenya. Tim Christophersen, from the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) said that climate change is "having an effect here on the local community... droughts are more frequent".

The Government of Madagascar and the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) announced today that 705,588 carbon credits are certified for sale from the Makira Forest REDD+ Project. WCS estimates that it will ...

Strengthening community forest rights is an essential strategy to reduce billions of tonnes of carbon emissions, making it an effective way for governments to meet climate goals, safeguard forests and protect the livelihoods ...

The Wildlife Conservation Society announced today that the Government of Madagascar has approved carbon sales with Microsoft and its carbon offset partner, The CarbonNeutral Company, and Zoo Zurich. The carbon ...

The planet's soil releases about 60 billion tons of carbon into the atmosphere each year, which is far more than that released by burning fossil fuels. This happens through a process called soil respiration. This enormous ...

Using the assessment tool ForWarn, U.S. Forest Service researchers can monitor the growth and development of vegetation that signals winter's end and the awakening of a new growing season. Now these researchers ...

Argentina might seem a long way to go for an environmental engineer seeking to better understand land use in Wisconsin. But on his Fulbright Scholar Program-supported journey to Argentina in 2014, Civil and ...

Researchers from the UK and Malaysia have detected a human fingerprint deep in the Borneo rainforest in Southeast Asia. Cold winds blowing from the north carry industrial pollutants from East Asia to the ...

User comments : 0

Please sign in to add a comment.
Registration is free, and takes less than a minute.
Read more

Click here to reset your password.
Sign in to get notified via email when new comments are made.